Snow guards are structures that are mounted to a roof to prevent or decrease snow sheets falling off of the slope of the roof. Various types exist. Of particular relevance to the present invention, are snow guards employed for standing seam metal roofs.
With reference to FIG. 1, it can be seen that standing seam metal roof 10 is characterized by having a plurality of roofing segments 12, with each roofing segment typically having a panel 14 and a standing seam 16. The standing seams 16 are raised above the level of the panels 14 and form ridges with neighboring roofing segments 12. The panels 14 of the standing seam metal roof are typically quite smooth, and it will be appreciated that snow accumulating on such a roof can slide off in large masses for many reasons. Some snow guards are offered in the prior art for helping to prevent this.
Some snow guard assemblies for standing seam metal roofs exist but they are structurally distinguishable from the present snow guard assembly. For example, Hockman U.S. Pat. No. 7,487,617 and Peter U.S. Pat. No. 933,784 show snow guards in the form of small discrete snow supports located only over the standing seam to which they are secured. They do not teach elongated snow support members. Place U.S. Pat. No. 2,201,320 shows use of an elongated member, but it is integral with the structure used to mount it to the roof. The elongated member also is taught only to span a single roof segment. Based on the state of the art, the present invention provides various structural improvements in a snow guard assembly for standing seam metal roof.